by Bill Harley
“See you later, worm.”
Anthony whipped his handlebars around and pedaled off. Mrs. Gritbun waddled along after him.
Aunt Inga turned to Darius and spit more angry words at him. “I just knew it. There Anthony is, trying to make friends, whispering a little welcome to you, and you can’t even respond. I’m embarrassed you’re my relative. Pick up your things and come inside.”
“I want to go home,” said Darius.
“This is your home, little Mr. Snootypants,” Aunt Inga snorted.
Darius followed his great-aunt into the house. What first struck Darius about the house was that the walls themselves seemed lonely—they were bare and pale, with no pictures of family, no art, no maps. The house was smaller than it looked from outside, and Darius couldn’t imagine where he was going to sleep. Certainly, he hoped, not in the same room with Aunt Inga.
He shouldn’t have worried.
Aunt Inga led him through the living room, which was completely taken up with a couch, an overstuffed chair, a small coffee table, and a large television set. The TV was on, filling the room with the sounds of a commercial about floor wax. A half-empty bag of the cookies Aunt Inga liked lay on the table. Darius followed her into the kitchen and down a few steps that led to the back door. He wondered if she was leading him outside. But then she turned and unlocked a side door that opened to a dark stairway.
“You’ll have to sleep down there,” Inga said. “I have no other room for you.”
“In the basement?” Darius asked.
“I just knew it!” she said. “Here’s a boy who doesn’t have a home, and I offer him mine, but it’s not good enough for him. Maybe you’d like me to give up my own bed? Is that what you want?”
“No,” said Darius.
“Well, it doesn’t make much difference what you want, because you’re lucky to have anything at all. This was not my idea. I didn’t want to take you. ‘There’s no one else!’ they said. And so here I am stuck with an ungrateful nine-year-old boy—”
“I’m eleven,” said Darius.
“Don’t correct me. I don’t care if you’re forty-six. There’s a cot down there for you. At least it’s cool. And if you’re staying here, that’s where you’ll sleep. And I guess you will stay here, because no one else wants you. You can take your things down by yourself. I’m already behind with the million other things I had to do today. And don’t ask for food until suppertime.”
Aunt Inga put her hands on her hips and waited for Darius to move. He lifted his suitcase and lugged it down the basement stairs one step at a time. As he reached the bottom he heard Aunt Inga muttering to herself, “Thinks he’s Mr. Snootypants. Like I don’t have anything else to do but serve him hand and foot. I knew this was going to happen.”
One dim light bulb hung over his head, casting long wavering shadows. In the corner beside a workbench was a small cot with a thin mattress and threadbare blanket. The pillow had no pillowcase. Darius put the suitcase next to the cot, sat down, and dropped his head into his hands.
“I have to get out of here,” he said out loud. “I have to find Miss Hastings.”
“I heard that,” Aunt Inga called from the top of the stairs. Then Darius heard footsteps over his head. The noise of the television came through the floorboards.
Darius lay down on the cot. He reached in his pants pocket and pulled out the silver wings. Holding them close to his face, he ran his fingers over them, wondering if he would ever see Miss Hastings again.
Before he knew it, he had fallen asleep.
4
Darius Makes a Discovery
Things looked bleak for Darius. I wish they hadn’t, and you may too.
You may be wishing that Darius would wake up back at home with Miss Hastings and find that moving in with his aunt was all a dream.
Or that Aunt Inga had just had a bad day, and today she would wake him with a kiss and a large breakfast of waffles, strawberries, and seven pounds of whipped cream.
Or that Darius, while sleeping, somehow acquired magic powers and turned Aunt Inga into a goldfish that lived on fish flakes, not cookies.
But none of those things happen. Not in this story.
Instead, Darius awoke the next morning in a musty basement on a cot with a thin mattress and threadbare blanket. His stomach was screaming for food. Still wearing his clothes from the day before, he tiptoed up the basement stairs.
On the top step he found a plate of food. Aunt Inga must have left it there for him the night before. On the plate was a small, dried-up pork patty, some overcooked green beans, and a stale piece of bread. Darius was starving, but he wasn’t desperate enough to eat this. He opened the door and peered into the hallway. Seeing no sign of his aunt, he slipped into the kitchen.
The sun was streaming through the windows over the sink. Outside, he could hear the twitter of birds in the trees, the drone of a lawnmower, and the occasional vroom of a truck or car passing down the street.
Darius looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was almost eight-thirty. Was Aunt Inga already up and out of the house? He walked quietly through the living room, where he thought he heard a faint buzzing and hissing. Following the sound down another hallway, he came to a closed door. He pressed his ear against it and listened—the buzzing and hissing was definitely louder. Darius realized it was the moist and resonant sound of Aunt Inga snoring.
Darius didn’t know that adults slept late. His father and Miss Hastings were always up before the sun every morning. Darius was usually an early riser, too, but he was rarely the first one up in his house.
He tiptoed back through the living room to the kitchen. Now his stomach was rumbling loud enough to wake even Aunt Inga. He pulled open the refrigerator. It was nearly empty—large bottles of soft drinks lined the door, and half a loaf of white bread, a stick of butter, and a jar of mayonnaise stood on the top shelf. The remains of a pound of bacon lay lonely in the meat drawer. The freezer was stuffed with frozen dinners. Looking through the cupboards, Darius found two cans of green beans and bag after bag of little cookies. He liked cookies, but not for breakfast. And anyway, he had a feeling that Aunt Inga kept track of exactly how many bags were in her cupboard.
Finally, Darius took two pieces of bread from the refrigerator and put them in the toaster. When they had browned to a dark and crunchy perfection—Miss Hastings would have been proud—he buttered them and carried them back downstairs.
Just as Darius reached the bottom of the steps, he stopped. A shaft of sunlight beamed down through the one basement window, and it shone into a gloomy corner like a golden spotlight. There, back in the cobwebs, Darius saw something that made his heart leap.
Stuffing the toast in his mouth, he crawled over old packing boxes and past a battered wardrobe until he came to the object highlighted by the sun. It was a very old bicycle, neglected and covered in cobwebs. The handlebars were rusty, and so were the wheel rims and spokes. The frame of the bike was a strange color of green that reminded Darius of the sea on a cloudy day. He tried to push it forward. Both tires were flat, and the bike seemed to weigh a ton.
Still, it was a bicycle.
Obviously no one had used it in years. Whose bike could it be? Never in a million years could Darius imagine Aunt Inga on a bicycle.
Darius thought of his own bicycle left behind. He clearly remembered that summer evening when he took his first ride on a two-wheeler.
He and his father had just finished dinner. The rays from the setting sun cast the trees and houses in a warm golden light. There was no traffic on their quiet street. Darius could hear only the hum of the crickets and cicadas as he climbed on the bike. How he loved its shiny red frame and silver fenders.
While Darius tried to balance himself, his father placed one hand on the back of the seat and the other on Darius’s shoulder to steady him.
“Okay, flyboy,” said his father, “you pedal and I’ll hold on.”
“What if I fall, Dad?” Darius asked.
/> “Don’t worry,” his father said. “Just give it your best try.”
“But you told me you hurt your leg when you fell off a bike. That’s why you limp!”
“That’s true, son, I did have a bad fall,” said his father. “When you are learning to do something new, you always run the risk of falling once or twice. That’s how you grow.”
That was a typical thing for Rudy Frobisher to say—he had tried many new things in his lifetime, and he was no longer afraid of falling.
“Anyway,” his father went on, “I won’t let you fall. You’ll be fine.”
Darius gripped the handlebars tightly. He felt his father’s strong hands give the bike a push to get it going. Reassured by the unmistakable hiccupping sound of his father’s limp and the ching ching ching of the coins bouncing in his pocket, Darius began to pedal. Then he felt his father’s hand leave his shoulder.
“Don’t let go, Dad!” Darius shouted.
“Keep pedaling!” his father yelled. “Go, flyboy, go!”
Darius pedaled harder, and the bike picked up speed, racing down the street. “Hold on to me, Dad!” he shrieked. “Hold on!”
And then he realized that he could no longer hear his father’s hiccupping footsteps. He took a quick look back over his shoulder. His father was standing far behind him with his hands on his hips and a huge smile on his face.
“Pedal!” his father urged. “Pedal, and watch where you’re going. Always watch where you’re going!”
A shudder of excitement ran through Darius as he realized that he was riding on his own. He felt balanced, in control, yet somehow completely free from the world around him. He had often dreamed of soaring above the clouds, but this was no dream. He felt both terrified and exhilarated.
“Yippeee!” Darius was nearing the end of the block with no idea how to turn around and afraid to try. Somehow he managed a wobbly, twisting turn and headed back toward his father, who was still urging him on.
“Come home, flyboy! Come on back! All on your own!”
The loud honk of a horn on the street startled Darius out of his daydream. He wasn’t riding a bike with his father—he was standing in Aunt Inga’s dirty, musty, stinky basement. But he was looking at a real bicycle, lying unused, in need of a rider.
Darius made a path through the boxes and pulled the bike across the basement, shoving it around the old wardrobe. After several tries, he finally managed to push the bike up the basement stairs and out the back door.
In the daylight, Darius could see that the bike was in bad shape. Not only were the wheels flat and the rims rusted, but the fenders were dented so badly that they scraped the wheels when they rolled. The chain was rusted, and the seat was badly tattered and worn.
But Darius also saw that the situation was not hopeless. With a little hard work, he could fix it up and use it. He could already picture himself flying along the street, racing farther and farther from Aunt Inga’s house.
And so, the makings of a plan came to Darius. I’ll fix this bike, he thought. I’ll ride away from Aunt Inga and never come back. I’ll find Miss Hastings, and we’ll take care of each other.
He knew it wouldn’t be easy. Miss Hastings was very far away. As a matter of fact, Darius wasn’t sure just where she would be living since the lawyers had kicked her out of the house. She’d said she had a place to stay, some friends somewhere in the town where Darius had grown up. But where?
Really, it was a ridiculous idea, fixing up an old bike and riding hundreds of miles to find a very old woman who burns toast. Where would he sleep on the way? What would he eat? The chances of pulling it off were a million to one.
But it was a dream, and when things are this bad a person needs some kind of dream.
He thought about his father. Finding him was a dream, too, but Darius didn’t have the faintest idea of how to make it come true. Even if he knew where to look, how would he get there? Sneak on board a freighter? Find his own hot air balloon? Build a giant kite? No. He decided the first step would be to find Miss Hastings. If anyone could help him find Rudy Frobisher, it was his beloved housekeeper.
For now, fixing the bicycle and finding Miss Hastings would have to be enough.
Darius decided to carry the bike back down the stairs and keep it in the basement. He thought about asking Aunt Inga if he could fix it. But if he asked, then Aunt Inga would know he wanted the bike, and she didn’t seem likely to give him anything he wanted. If she said no, Darius thought he would die. He decided it was better not to ask. The bike would be his secret.
I know what you are thinking.
WHAT IF HE GETS CAUGHT?
Good question. Carrying a heavy old bike up and down the basement stairs makes a lot of noise. You’re probably wondering why Aunt Inga hadn’t heard all the racket. Even Darius wondered why she hadn’t burst into the kitchen, demanding to know what had been going on.
The reason is that Aunt Inga was still sound asleep. She always got her best sleep from six to ten every morning. During the early hours of the night, she would lie awake and think about all the things that were wrong and all the things that might go wrong next week or next year. Finally, just before dawn she would doze off, exhausted. And when she slept, she slept like a log. Right until ten o’clock in the morning, which is late indeed, unless you are a teenager.
The rest of the day, Aunt Inga walked around in her pink-and-green housecoat, unless she had to go to the store, which she did every Wednesday.
Aunt Inga’s house was small. The living room, kitchen, and her bedroom occupied the entire first floor. Two tiny rooms upstairs were filled almost to the ceiling with things she had bought and saved but never used. She rarely went upstairs anymore and never went into the basement. And she hardly ever went outdoors, except for shopping or to visit in the yard with her neighbor Mrs. Gritbun.
Aunt Inga didn’t have to go out because she worked at home on her own schedule. She sat in the big chair in front of the television and made phone calls, trying to get people to buy subscriptions to magazines nobody wanted. She persuaded a lot of people to buy them because she was so pushy and annoying. As you know, it can be hard to say no to someone who is pushy and annoying. Some people would buy even the stupidest magazines from Aunt Inga just to get off the phone with her.
Her sales pitch went something like this:
“Yes, I’m calling for the American Magazine Company. Believe me, I don’t like making these calls any more than you like getting them. You can imagine how difficult it is to call people I don’t know, but how else am I going to get by? My time is as valuable as yours, so let’s get on with it. You may not like it, but I’m just going to keep calling, so you might as well quit stalling and order some magazines now.
“Only one? That’s it? All right, but there’s no reason to make my job so difficult. I’m just trying to help everybody here, but nobody ever appreciates it. I’ll just put you down for a couple of extra subscriptions.
“Sure, go ahead. Eat your dinner while I have to stay here and work. Fine. Good-bye.”
She sold a lot of magazines.
Aunt Inga was so good at making people feel like idiots, she only had to make phone calls in her big chair in front of the television for three hours a day. She liked to call in the late afternoon and early evening, when she knew people were sitting down to eat dinner with their families.
It worked like a charm. Aunt Inga had dozens of golden plaques from the magazine companies thanking her for selling magazines that nobody wanted.
When Aunt Inga wasn’t on the phone selling magazines, she sat in her big chair and watched television and ate cookies and took little naps. The television was on from ten o’clock in the morning, when she woke up, till eleven-thirty at night, when she went to bed.
The only thing that could tear Aunt Inga away from her chair in front of the TV was the mail. Every afternoon at exactly a quarter past two, Aunt Inga stood at the front door waiting for the mailman. If he was late, she let him know what an
inconvenience it was for her. And of course, the mail always disappointed her.
“Nothing. Nothing but people wanting me to buy things I don’t need. Do they think I don’t have anything better to do with my time than open their dumb envelopes?”
You may be thinking it’s odd that she hated being bothered by people wanting her to buy things she didn’t need, when that is exactly what she did for a living. Me too. But some people are just like that.
So, Aunt Inga didn’t hear Darius when he took the bike up and down the basement stairs. It’s a good thing, because I’m sure, just as Darius was, that she wouldn’t have let him touch the bike, even though no one was using it.
Aunt Inga didn’t know the first thing about bikes. She couldn’t ride a bike if she had to. To be sure, she had learned how to ride a bike when she was a little girl. But even though everyone says that once you ride a bike, you never forget how, I am afraid that she had.
You are probably wishing that Aunt Inga would just stop being mean and say, “Darius, my little bunnykins, anything you find in that musty old basement is yours.”
But you know Aunt Inga well enough by now to know that she’s not going to say anything of the sort.
5
A Strange Occurrence
Darius survived the next few days, but that was about all he did. It seemed that Aunt Inga was doing her best to forget that he was there.
And then, on the fourth day at Aunt Inga’s, a very strange thing happened.
It was quite early and Darius was sitting in the dim basement with his head in his hands, staring at the bike again. It was in worse shape than he thought.
“I can’t do this,” he said to himself, “it’s impossible! I’ll have to live with Aunt Inga forever!”
He climbed up the stairs and went out the door into the backyard. Absentmindedly, he stuck his hands in his pockets. His fingers touched the chain that Miss Hastings had given him. He pulled it out and held it up. The silver wings dangled in front of his face.
